Amazon’s 2017 Prime Day sale will be July 11th

Amazon just announced its third annual Prime Day, the retailer’s answer to Black Friday that originally started to celebrate its 20th anniversary. While Amazon had previously said they would be doing a third year of Prime Day, this is the first time we’re getting the actual date and previews of some of the sales.

Amazon is tempting Prime customers by saying there will be “hundreds of thousands of deals”, with new ones coming as often as every five minutes. As a refresher, you have to be a Prime member to access these deals, although you can technically sign up for the free trial option.

This year there will be 30 hours of sales, starting at 6pm PT / 9pm ET on Monday July 10th and continuing through all of Tuesday July 11th. Also, Prime Day sales will now be available in China, India and Mexico – bringing the total amount of countries with deals to 13.

Last year Prime Day was Amazon’s biggest day ever, even with the checkout glitches the site suffered from during peak shopping times.

This year Amazon will be organizing deals by themes – i.e pet lovers, techies and gardeners. This is a big deal because one complaint during past Prime Days have been that it’s really hard to find deals you actually want to take advantage of. What good is a hundred thousand deals if you can’t find one for something you actually want to buy?

Another complaint in past years was that some deals were low-quality and for items no one really wanted. While this was most likely the result of algorithms and not human curation, it was still disappointing to some customers.

While there are still bound to be some duds among the hundreds of thousands of deals this year, Amazon is emphasizing that this year’s sale will have great TV deals, which is something all customers love and traditional Black Friday sales are known for. The retailer is specifically touting (still unspecified) discounts on the Element 4K Ultra HD Smart LED TV – Amazon Fire TV Edition, which will help make it “one of the largest volume TV deals in history”.

While Amazons says they will have a record amount of inventory, they probably will still sell out of their most discounted TVs (and other electronics), so it’s best to monitor the site as often as possible to make sure you can score one.

While Amazon isn’t yet mentioning any deals on its own devices, it’s a safe bet that you’ll find discounted prices on Kindles, Fire Tablets, Fire TV, Echo Speakers and more. Last year Amazon said it sold “hundreds of thousands of kindles” and over 2.5 times more Fire TV devices than during the prior year’s Prime Day.

Prime Day will also benefit entrepreneurs that sell on Amazon, with 40% of Lightning Deals will come from small businesses.

Deals Starting Now

Amazon is also introducing some deals starting today, in anticipation of Prime Day.

Amazon Music Unlimited for four months for $0.99 cents (for new subscribers only).

A $10 credit on Amazon the first time you stream a video from Prime video on your TV. This is a great deal for anyone who subscribed to Prime but has never taken advantage of their video offerings. Note that it has to be on a TV device like a Fire Stick, and videos streamed on your computer won’t count.